Fire Eye (17 page)

Alex sets a cracking pace in spite of the pieces of blanket around their boots. Jed finally calls a halt and removes the coverings, keeping them for future use.

“We’ve gone far enough to break the trail,” he says as he sits down and twists the cap off the coke bottle. “Have a drink. Not the best drink to have on a walk, but we can use the bottle for water when we find some. At least it’s diet coke!”

Alex understands the need for liquid and takes the bottle, drinking in small sips. While she does so, Jed stands up and starts to empty his pockets, throwing everything on the ground next to the billy and the nut bars. Knife, matches, a small ball of string, a compass, steel for sharpening his knife and some water purifying tablets.

“What are you doing?” Alex asks as she continues sipping.

“It’s time to see what resources we have. When you’re ready, I want you do the same,” he commands.

Alex understands what he is doing. She opens her small travel bag and starts to throw things out onto the pile. Lip gloss, packets of pepper and sugar picked up from cafés, nail file and scissors, band aids, a wallet for cards and money, some paper clips, old receipts, lip stick, some loose tampons, a tube of sun cream… then her hand stops as her fingers feel something in the bag.

Jed notices the hesitation. “We need everything, Alex,” he encourages.

She withdraws her hand, drops the packet of hard sweets onto the pile then tosses out the Chupa Chups lollipops, one by one. “I’d forgotten about them,” Alex excuses herself.

Jed looks down at them, realising the iron maiden has some weaknesses after all. “I prefer peppermint Kit Kats and Jersey Caramels,” he responds, enjoying her discomfort. “I guess they’ll come in handy for a sugar boost.”

She gives him a look as she keeps her hand in the travel bag. Finally she withdraws her hand, cupped around a long thin shape and tosses it onto the pile.

Jed looks down at it stunned, then reaches to hold it between his fingertips. Drawing the knife from its battered metal scabbard, he inspects it closely. The blade is under two centimetres wide at the base and thirteen centimetres long. It tapers to a point with the first four centimetres sharpened to an edge. It is attached to a wooden hilt with nine rough grooves cut on each side. The scabbard has a leaf spring arrangement so it can be clipped to a belt or uniform jacket. He recognises it as a World War I German fighting knife.

“Have you been carrying this all the time I’ve known you?” he asks warily.

She hesitates for a few seconds and then nods. “No one will ever brutalise me again!” The expression on her face is determined.

He has no doubt she means it. Although he has heard parts of her story and seen Decker in action, seeing her produce that deadly piece of historical weaponry drives home the reality of their predicament.

“Anything else you want to declare?” he asks, only half in jest.

“Not right now,” she answers, the hint of a tight, fathomless smile leaving the question open.

Jed wonders about her avoidance. He has a brief vision of her with a rocket launcher in the boot of her car, but skips to another thought.

“We saw Decker try to do something with his laptop,” he says as he bends down to sift through their meagre possessions. “I don’t see much chance that he planted another back-up transmitter on us.” Looking over himself, Jed takes his watch off and inspects it before putting it back on. “The only time this has been off is when I was in the shower.” He fingers his belt buckle but rules that out. He looks over at her and runs his eyes over her body. “What about you?”

Her head tilts to one side and he can see her taking the question seriously.

“I don’t want to be paranoid but we should strip and have a close look at everything,” he suggests, missing the double meaning.

“Not likely,” she shoots back. “Not here. I’ve got nudity issues!”

Don’t know why?
he thinks, as his eye runs involuntarily down her attractive body and strong shapely legs. He has a vision of those legs wrapped around him but keeps his expression cool. Looking up, Jed knows she can guess his thoughts but she makes no comment. Both know they have more important things to deal with. “How about you go behind the bush over there and I’ll go behind the tree and we have a good feel.”
Damn! That didn’t come out right,
he winces as he stumbles on to cover his discomfort. A case of the subconscious overriding the conscious! “You’ll be looking for something small, like a capsule. It could be sewn into a lining or anything. If he placed one, he’d pick something he was pretty sure we would have on us when we went bush. The latest ones are miniature transmitters that can be preset or activated with a coded message.”

Knowing how serious the situation is she nods before moving off into the scrub, further away than he intended. He does the same, stepping behind a bush to strip everything off. He fingers his T-shirt, jeans, underclothes, socks and necklace, not with the expectation of finding anything but making sure he is thorough. He dresses and steps across to a log to brush off his feet and put his socks and boots on. He looks down at the boot in his hands and sees the flaw in the rubber at the back of the heel. An expensive pair of boots shouldn’t have such a flaw.

Slipping his knife out of its scabbard, Jed slices a ‘V’ into the heel, inserting the point into the rubber and flicking it up. He can see where a hole has been drilled into the heel and sealed with black boot repair glue. A capsule lies partly hidden by rubber and glue. Jed strips it away, leaving the capsule in the palm of his hand.

“Alex, over here!”

“Give me a minute! Have to get dressed!”

He contemplates the scene taking place in the scrub behind him and, while immersed in his thoughts, she appears at his side. To his great disappointment, fully dressed.

“Take a look,” holding out his hand. “The bastard had more time in my house than I thought!” he says angrily, remembering the night in question. “The man is good!”

Alex picks up the capsule between her fingers. “It looks pretty harmless, but I know otherwise.”

“Let’s have a look at your boots,” he replies, beckoning her to sit down on the log. Alex slips them off for inspection. They are a light but sturdy Scarpa bushwalking shoe with good inbuilt ventilation.

Jed picks them up one by one and turns them over in his hands, inspecting them carefully. “Like almost everyone else, we both have one favourite pair of outdoor boots. Look here,” he says, pointing to the back of one of her heels. “He did a better job on yours than mine. More time I guess! I’m out of my depth here but these seem to be miniature RFIDs, radio frequency identification units. They don’t have a battery but use energy from a radio signal to send a response. Good enough for close-range work.”

Alex watches as Jed picks up his knife and slices a ‘V’ into the heel of her shoe, levering out the piece and placing it in her hand.

“The man is bloody good, I’ll give him that! He got us both. But he hasn’t been able to use it so far. Maybe he couldn’t get a signal or a satellite or maybe they’re broken, who knows? Let’s count ourselves grateful for small mercies.” He puts both capsules on the ground, picks up a rock and smashes them both. “Whatever problems he may have had, at least now we know for sure they don’t work.”

They sit together in silence for a while.

Finally, Jed says, “Going forward is our only option at the moment. It’s a lot further back to the homestead! Going forward also means we have a fair idea where he is—behind us! I just don’t like the idea of not knowing where the bastard might be. Apart from that, I’ve got a stubborn streak and I want to get to that plane.” He picks up the covers he made for their boots and fits them once again.

She doesn’t doubt the distance back to the homestead, remembering the jolting journey of the day before. “We keep going,” she confirms with determination. “I’m just as stubborn!”

Decker has decided on a plan and is determined to make it work. He lets Joe off the leash and sends him to find the bitch’s tracks. Joe has no choice if he wants to give Brad the faintest chance of staying alive. Decker even relents just a little, weighing up whether to let the black fellas go if he can lay his hands on the bitch and the headmaster. The thought doesn’t last long.

The chances of getting caught out here are slim and he has put the effort into designing a rock solid alibi. If it comes to it, he can show that he and Jesse are a long way from here. He learnt his lesson the last time when the bitch paid off his mate and sent him to prison. Some mate! Now dead and buried and no one is the wiser, just another missing person. A back hoe can work wonders in the Tasmanian bush!

He has set Jesse up with everything he needs and given him clear instructions. Brad is tied to a tree within rifle shot so Jess can finish him any time he likes. Joe has no idea where he is and has to produce the goods. If he does, anything is possible.

Decker has to admit he is getting a bit wiser as he gets older. Maybe he doesn’t have to do everyone who gets in his way. Hope gives people motivation and if he gets what he wants, maybe he can afford to be generous. After all, Decker consoles himself, he is really a pretty good person. It’s just that life has been hard. He’s had to do tough things to survive. He and the bitch could have had a good life if she had done as she was told. All he wants is a good meal every night and a good screw whenever he needs it, but she had to be difficult. So be it, but she will pay, then life can go on. It is too late to find a woman to be a mother to Jesse but he is getting a bit past that, anyway. Maybe he’ll just find a woman who’ll be a good wife to him. Decker waits patiently for Joe to return, confident everything is back under his control.

Joe heads out to the fire that led them astray earlier in the day. It is easy to follow the tracks between the bluff and the site of the fire. He finds where Alex and Jed slept for the night, shallow depressions in the sand outlining the shape of their bodies. He also finds the cleft where they climbed onto the bluff and the slight marks where their boots and belts scarred the surface of the rock. From there he finds tracks heading to the site of the fire, the imprint of smaller shoes and a lighter footprint, a woman, crossing the country with most of her weight on her toes, moving fast but carefully. She turns no stones and breaks few twigs, the only sign of her passing being the marks of her feet where they touch the softer ground. She is good, far better than many others he has tracked in the bush.

From the fire he tracks her out to the pointy hill and even finds the spot where she sat on a log. She held a leafy branch between her knees then tossed it aside and walked out to meet someone, whose tracks are ghost-like shadows on the ground. He finds traces of rubber where two people sat close together. One set of tracks is clear in the dirt but the other set is the ghost and barely discernible. It is only the low angle of the sun that allows him to pick up the faint trace of the footprints, just a slight disturbance in the natural surface of the ground.

It is hard going. From where they sat together, they moved across the country leaving only the faintest impression of their passing, like a pair of whispering spirits. He needs all his skills to track them. He finds sharper edges of rock where tiny strands of material still cling to the surface, threads of cotton or wool perhaps. They covered their feet with something at the start, maybe a blanket. The grass helps. Most of the time they put their feet under the grass so as not to disturb it but one set of prints treads more often on the grass. With the sun at the right angle and the grass still moist from the early morning dew, he can make out the barely visible tracks. He manoeuvres so the sun is behind him at a certain angle. He has learned the secret of connecting his eyes with the rays so he can see the vaporous shadows leading in a line to the northwest.

The sandstone is harder still but he can just pick up the line of faint disturbance the ghost track leaves over patches of rock; the slightest disturbance of the grains on the surface. He works them into his view to get a line on where they appear to be going. At times he comes to a spot where the rock has worn down to sand and the grains give a clearer picture. It is a skill possessed by few modern black men but one Joe learned from the best as a young hunter.

His father’s teacher was one of the last of the traditional men, Ungondangery, also called Possum, one of the wild men of the hills in the 1930s and 40s. Possum was a man with the savage pluck of a giant. He could tackle any man and walk into any wild bush camp to sort his troubles out. His specialty was taking young lubras in good condition from an easy life and white man’s food in the native camps attached to lonely settler’s homesteads. He would swoop down and keep the female for months of quick moving, hunting and fighting. While he carried only his fighting implements, she would carry everything else over the ranges as he flew through the night on another daring escapade. When she was worn out, he would swoop on another, young and fit, to help him travel. Legend has it he had one soft spot—once he rescued a child and delivered her to a homestead. It would have been a break from his normal pattern, but even men of the wild have motivations known only to themselves.

The people he is tracking know the bush, Joe decides. Their only mistake is to head in a constant direction without meandering around to sow confusion. They are going somewhere and don’t want to waste time. Most likely they don’t deserve to die, just like Brad. Maybe he will have to give them up to save his little brother, but no one will be getting out of this situation alive unless he comes up with a bloody good idea.

As the angle of the sun increases, it becomes increasingly difficult and finally impossible to follow the faint traces. He marks the last place where he can still read the tracks then continues on in a direct line toward the rise of ground just visible over the scrub and trees. He needs to pick up the tracks again but has to wait for the sun to move closer to the horizon. He has no choice but to sit and wait but that doesn’t bother him. Every successful hunter has learned the skill of patience. He finds a good spot and passes the time sitting with his back against a tree, immersed in his thoughts as the sun creeps across the sky. Eventually it begins its downward arc. He stands to brush dirt from his pants and moves in a circle of increasing radius around his resting point, trying to cut the trail again, hoping the people he is tracking are still heading in the same direction.

He finds what he is looking for in the light of the late afternoon sun. Faint impressions in the ground, not footprints as such, just shallow depressions slightly different to the surrounding ground. Sunrise would be even better, with the early morning dew highlighting the tracks he seeks. He looks at the sun sinking toward the horizon. They are still heading in the same direction, toward the bluff near the coast. It is strange. They aren’t escaping but going someplace important to them.

He can only think of one thing pulling them in that direction, northwest onto Aboriginal land, a place his father’s teacher would be familiar with. It will take him too long to get back to that bastard white fella, so he finds a good place to spend the night. The white man needs his skills so he can wait. Brad is safe for a while but Joe knows he has to come up with good tracks to keep buying time.

He wonders who the people ahead are and what they have done to have this man on their trail. He respects them and their abilities to flit across the land without leaving the marks clumsy white people normally leave. Someone has passed skills onto this man—black fella skills. Joe’s mind keeps working down the line of thought. One of his people, probably from another tribe, has trusted this man enough to teach him some Aboriginal ways. That creates a problem for Joe. He has to save his little brother, but can he give up a man one of his people has respected. He puts the thought aside to concentrate on more immediate issues.

He marks the place where he picked up the trail, then finds a good spot to spend the night among sheltering boulders. He drags in dry timber to feed a fire and harvests a selection of berries and plums from the land. He still can’t resist a decent feed so after he gets a fire going in a scraped depression he goes looking for a goanna.